“An inquiry [as to the true divisional line between the Republic of Venezuela and British Guiana] should, of course, be conducted carefully and judicially.... When report is made [by a Commission appointed by Congress] and accepted, it will, in my opinion, be the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, [etc., etc.,] ... which after investigation we have determined of right to belong to Venezuela.”--_President Cleveland’s message to Congress, vide “Time’s,” December 18._ ] Of the whole territory in dispute, far the larger portion went to Great Britain, and some few persons who uttered cries of distress over the message of December 17 counted this as a rebuke and rebuff for President Cleveland. That was the very hardihood of perversity in taking a false view. Mr. Cleveland had declared that our Government was “without any convictions as to the final merits of the dispute.” The supreme, the vital point is that in the award of the Paris tribunal, accepted by both parties, law triumphed over force. The boundary line was traced, and titles with which Great Britain had vested herself by her own acts, heedless of the protests of Venezuela and rejecting her and our appeals for adjudication, were passed upon by an impartial arbitral tribunal according to evidence and the principles of public law. Whoever gained, whoever lost, that was quite immaterial from our point of view. The process of territorial expansion by stealthy encroachment, by unwarranted shifting of boundaries, and the alteration of maps and statistics, was at an end. The sovereignty of the lawful owner replaced that of the squatter. Venezuela was delivered from duress and from peril, no longer was her soil or her destiny under the menace of foreign control, and the situation created by the attempt of a power over the sea to extend the European system within this hemisphere, which Monroe declared to be dangerous to our peace and safety, and against which Mr. Cleveland had invoked the Monroe Doctrine, no longer existed. Mr. Cleveland had triumphed, the Monroe Doctrine had triumphed, peace had triumphed. General Harrison and Sir Richard Webster parted with expressions of mutual esteem, and the report of the proceedings of the Paris tribunal, in eleven folio parts, now on the shelves of the New York Public Library, was presented by the Marquis of Salisbury, while to Mr. Richard Olney was tendered not long ago the appointment as Ambassador at the Court of St. James’s.